Numerical analysis of passive micromixer with novel obstacle design

Abstract

The micromixing performance in the micromixer is directly related to the selectivity and yield of the target product in the subsequent chemical reaction. In this paper, six kinds of mixer models with obstacles are designed by numerical simulation to improve the mixing efficiency. The four different obstacle shapes are square, round, left triangle and right triangle. Among these four different obstacle mixers, square obstacles are the best obstacle shape. The square obstacle mixer (SOM) is the most efficient mixer in four different obstacle shape mixers, because the chaotic convection effect produced by the SOM mixer is significantly higher than the other three. In order to improve the mixing efficiency, two different numbers of elliptical structure SOMs are designed. With the increase of the elliptical structure, the fluid passes the chaotic convection effect more and the mixing efficiency of the SOM5 mixer reaches over 95%, which achieves the purpose of improving the mixing efficiency.